


The Reed Mysteries

by Pylades_Drunk



Category: Detroit Evolution - Fandom, Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Gavin The Assistant Dorm Director, M/M, Minor Character Death, Nines the Private Investigator, and Asshole the Cat, featuring boy band Connor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25047817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pylades_Drunk/pseuds/Pylades_Drunk
Relationships: Chris Miller/Unnamed wife, Past Connor/Gavin Reed - Relationship, Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

“Jesus f’cking christ. How do none of these fit you?” I ask Lucy, one of my student workers who’d asked me to go with her to replace some jeans she’d destroyed hours before while helping me get a drunk student to the hospital.

“I’m sorry Gavin!” She says from inside the changing room. “I thought the zero would fit!”

“Sir, I think your problem may be that these are vanity sizing.” A store attendant says shyly. “To make our bigger customers feel better about themselves.” 

“Well that’s bullshit.” I snap, pissed but not at the attendant. “No offense but shit is humiliating.” The attendant looks absolutely relieved he wasn’t pissed at her. “Do you have an actual size 2 because she needs something to wear back to the dorms.”

“It’s a dress but it should work.” She runs off and comes back with a black sundress.

“Luce, will a sundress be good?” I ask.

“Yeah!”

My phone goes off as the attendant passes her the dress.

“Gavin Reed. What is it?”

“Gavin,” Sam’s voice shakes, “we need you back at the dorms. Someone died.” I could feel my fingers going numb as Sam hung up.

“Lucy, hurry. There’s an emergency at the residence hall.” I snap. Lucy hurries out with the tag in hand.

  
  
  
  


Lucy and I run up to the resident hall and slowed down as we saw the ambulance and fire trucks in front of the building. 

“What happened?” Lucy asks as we got closer to the cops cordoning off the building. I keep my eyes averted from the street fair because otherwise I’d get a glimpse of some… interesting looking thongs being sold at the park across the street.

“Look, stay right here. I’m going to ask Ada what happened.” I say, spotting the blonde nearby.

“Got it.”

As I make my way over, I can hear what the kids were saying.

“What’s going on?”

“I dunno. Is there a fire?”

“Someone probs let their potpourri boil over again.”

“Naw, it was Markus. He dropped his bhang again.”

“Markus, you suck!”

“It wasn’t me this time, I swear!”

They couldn’t know there’d been a death in the building. If they’d known, they wouldn’t be joking about bhangs. I think.

Okay, I hope.

Okay, maybe given how dumb some of my idiot residents are. Looking at you, Lazzo.

I could already tell that Ada was upset, but not for the same reasons as the residents. She definitely knew what happened.

“Gavin!” Ada, spotting me making my way to her, gestures. “It’s not good.”

I could tell whatever had happened was weighing on her. She smelled like she’d been smoking up a storm.

“Who was it? Who died?”

“It was one of the little stars.” She breathes.

“It was a student?” I asked, now horrified. All around us people looked over, confused. And it wasn’t because of how she was dressed because the turtleneck sweater, uniform skirt, and tights she was wearing didn’t stand out nearly as much as Lucy’s bald head a few yards away. It was the movie star thing. It always confused people but, every time a student enters the building, Ada would check their guests in and sing, “Look at all the stars living in this building.”

At first, I genuinely thought she was trying to flatter the many drama students since there were plenty of them in our hall. But one fix your own sundae day, Ada finally explained that they’d filmed a stunt from a movie here. Not while she had been attending school here but she’d taken the chance to look it up because one of the more chatty students had mentioned reading about it and it just fascinated Ada to no end. So she took to calling the residents little stars.

“Ada, what the fuck happened?” I ask again. “Sam left me a message but all it said was that there was a death in the building. Do you know who it was? And how?”

Ada shakes her head, her twin braids bouncing slightly. “I don’t know. I was just sitting at the front desk and suddenly I heard screaming.” She says, trembling. “They were screaming that a girl was at the bottom of the elevator shaft, and that she was dead.” God damn. 

“F’ck.” I hissed. I’d been expecting an overdose or a stabbing but death by elevator surfing? Girls don’t elevator surf. That’s just not something they do.

“It was awful. And now they won’t let them back into their rooms until-” Ada looked about ready to burst into tears before she could finish the sentence. I very awkwardly hugged her and let her cry into the shoulder of my hoodie. I may not like being touched but Ada was the exception to that rule. She’d just pick at my supposed abandonment issues and point out that besides Chris, she, Tina, and North, the bitchy cafeteria worker that’s always attached to Ada’s side were my only friends.

Then Ada lifts her head from my shoulder and says, “Uh-oh.”

I turn to see what she’s talking about and suck in my breath real fast. Because Mr. Williams, the husband of Loaralei Williams—who last spring was inaugurated as the college’s sixteenth president—is coming down the sidewalk toward us.

I knew a lot about the Williams because another thing I found in Jane’s files—right before I threw them all away—was an article clipped from the New York Times, making this big deal out of the fact that the newly appointed president had chosen to live in a residence hall rather than in one of the luxury buildings owned by the school.

“Loralei Williams,” the article said, “is an academician who does not wish to lose touch with the student population. When she comes home from her office, she rides the same elevator as the undergraduates next to whom she resides—”

What the Times completely fucking neglected to mention is that the president and her family live in Cyber Hall’s penthouse, which takes up the entire twentieth floor, and that they’d complained so much about the elevator stopping every floor to let students out that the chick that had my job before me finally issued them override keys.

Not a single person liked Todd Williams in the building. The fucker had a habit of calling Tina a midget ass rent a cop and called me a “fucking raccoon looking little fucker” after I answered one of his calls about his f’cking birds. His middle school aged daughter Alice was pretty well loved by everyone in the building though. Even I love that kid and I don’t f’cking like kids.

“Excuse me, I live here.” I groan as I realize I‘m going to have to intervene before Mr. Williams insults the cop.

“Sorry sir,” the cop says, “Emergency personnel only. No residents allowed in right now.” Todd began to puff himself up in a way I recognized as a tell from my birth giver as being two seconds from yelling and throwing punches.

“I am not a resident. “ Mr. Williams seems to swell. “I’m…I’m…” Mr. Williams can’t seem to quite figure out what he is. But it’s not like the cop cares.

“Sorry, man,” he says. “Go enjoy the street fair for a while, why dontcha? Or there’re some nice benches over in the park there. Whyn’t you go relax on one till we get the all-clear to start lettin’ people in again, okay?”

Mr. William’s temper looks like it‘s reaching its peak as I come hurrying up to him. I’ve abandoned Ada because Todd Williams looks as if he needs me more. He’s just standing there in a pair of too-big jeans and a nasty looking t-shirt, the bag of toys for Alice who he seemed to have forgotten is thirteen and not four, his mouth opening and closing in anger and confusion. He definitely looks like he was about to yak all over the cop.

“Look, he’s the college president’s husband.” I say, nodding toward Mr. Williams, who appears to be staring very hard at a nearby student with purple hair and an eyebrow ring. “Lorelai Williams? She lives in the penthouse, and I don’t think Mr. Williams is feeling too hot.”

The cop gives me the eye.

“I know you from somewhere?” the cop asks. It’s not a come-on. With me, this line never is. 

“Probably from the neighborhood,” I say, with excessive aggression. “I work in this building.” I flash him my college staff ID card, the one with the photo where I look drunk, even though I wasn’t. Until after I saw the photo. “See? I’m the assistant residence hall director.”

The cop didn’t look impressed by neither my attitude nor my job title.

“Whatever, get ‘im inside, if you want. But I dunno how yer gettin him up there without the elevator.” I grimaced, realizing I’d have to carry the drunken asshole 20 flights of stairs.

I fling a glance over my shoulder at Ada, who, seeing my predicament, rolls her eyes. But she stamps out her cigarette and heads gamely toward us, ready to offer whatever aid she can.

Before she quite gets to us, though, two young women—garbed in what I consider standard New york college attire, low rider jeans with belly rings—come bursting out of the building, breathing hard.

“Oh my God, Markus,” one of them calls to the bhang dropper. “What is up with the elevators? We just had to walk down seventeen flights of stairs.”

“I’m going to die,” the other girl announces.

“Seriously,” the first girl pants, loudly. “For what we’re paying in tuition and housing fees, you’d think the PRESIDENT would be able to invest in elevators that don’t break down all the time.”

I don’t miss her hostile glance at Todd, who made the mistake of letting his photo be published in the school paper, thus making him a recognizable target around the dorm. I mean, residence hall.

“C’mon,” I say quickly, giving his arm a hard tug. “Let’s go inside.”

“About time,” Todd grumbles, stumbling a little, as Ada moves to take hold of his other arm. The two of us steer her through the front door to cries—from the students—of “Hey! Why do they get to go in, but we don’t? We live here, too!” and “No fair!” and, “Fascists!”

I shoot a look at the girl who yelled facist, making her shrink back.

From the heavy footed way Todd’s stepping, he probably had a healthy amount of alcohol in his system already. A suspicion that’s confirmed when the surly drunk suddenly keels sideways and hurls into a planter once we get inside the building.

“Oh gross.” Ada scrunches her face up as I pull the hood of my hoodie over my nose.

“You’re fucking telling me.” I complain as we get Todd back upright. I pat his shoulder because it’s the “nice” thing to do after you’ve just upchucked in a planter.

“Who the hell are you?” He demands.

“Um,” I say. “I’m the assistant building director. Gavin Reed. Remember? We met a couple of months ago?”

Todd looks confused. “What happened to Jane?”

“Jane found another job,” I explain, which is a lie, since Jane was fired.

Todd just squints some more.

“Gavin Reed?” He blinks a few more times. “But aren’t you…aren’t you that boy? The one who used to sing in all those malls?”

That’s when I realize that Todd has finally recognized me, all right…

…but not as the assistant director of the building he lives in.

Wow. I never suspected Todd Williams of being a fan of teen pop. He seems more the Lynyrd Skynyrd type.

“I was,” I say to him, not totally pissed, because I still feel sorry for him, on account of the barf, and all. “But I don’t perform anymore.”

“Why?” Todd wants to know.

Ada and I exchange glances. Ada seems to be getting her sense of humor back, since there is a distinct upward slant to corners of her mouth.

“Um,” I say. “It’s kind of a long story. Basically I lost my recording contract—”

“Because you got fat?” Todd asks.

I had to remind myself that he and his wife are technically my bosses to prevent myself from throwing the fucker across the lobby.


	2. Chapter 2

Fortunately for Todd, I don’t have the chance to do anything about him calling me fat over nothing because my boss, Samson “Sixty” Perkins, Or Sam as the student workers sometimes ask, comes over. 

“Gavin, thank god.” He breathes. Ordinarily Sixty looks perfectly put together, almost like a businessman with a very, VERY specific fetish, but right now, he just looks frazzled.

“Thank you so much for coming.” He actually does look sort of relieved that I’m there, which makes me feel good. You know, that I really am needed, if only $23,500-a-year worth.

“Sure,” I say. “Was it someone we know?”

Sam shoots me a warning like Don’t talk about work in front of strangers. I roll my eyes and cross my arms as Sixty turns to Todd.

“Good morning Mr. Williams!” Sam all but bellows at him as if Todd was deaf and not drunk. Rude as fuck either way but I am not going to point that out to him.

Instead I helpfully say “He’s not feeling too hot.” I looked pointedly at the planter.

We haven’t worked together for all that long, Sixty and I. He was hired just a week or two before I was, to replace the director who’d quit right after Jane had been fired—but not out of solidarity with Jane, or anything. The director had quit because her husband had gotten a job as a forest ranger in Oregon.

I know. Forest ranger husband. I’d have quit to follow him, too.

But while Sixty is new to the live-in position of director of Cyber Hall, he’s not new to the field of higher education (which is what they call it when you’re involved in the counseling, but not the teaching, part of college life, or at least so I read in one of Jane’s files). The last dorm—I mean, residence hall—Sixty, a Yale grad, ran had been in Weston College in St. Pinechard, Texas.

Sixty had confided in me that moving from St. Pinechard to New York had been a massive culture shock. But he seemed to adapt quickly to New York life, if the shock of colorful business suits and obsession with looking as muscular as a tv actor was anything to go off of.

“Mr. Williams,” he says. “Let’s get you home, shall we? I’ll take you upstairs. Would that be all right, Mr. Williams?”

Mr. Williams nods faintly, his interest in my career change forgotten. Sixty takes the president’s husband by the arm as Tina, who has been hovering nearby, holds back a wave of firemen to make room for him and Mr. W. on the elevator they’ve turned back on especially for him. I can’t help glancing nervously at the elevator’s interior as the doors open. I sincerely hoped, for my own f’cking sanity, that there was no blood on there.

Thankfully there’s none there. It looks as fancy and vintage as it always has.

As the door closes, I hear Mr. Williams grumble something about his birds.

“God, I hope he doesn’t vomit again.” Ada says worriedly, 

“That would f’cking suck.” I agree.

“It hasn’t been this silent since before everyone moved in.” I nearly jump at the sound of North’s voice.

“Warn a man, Jesus f’ck, north.” I complain, letting go of Ada’s wrist.

“But I’m right. It’s unnerving without any of the kids being dumbasses out here.” North pushes. “Like normally Lazzo’s out here being a little gremlin and recording us and Echo’s usually chasing after Ripple.” Ada retreats to the office after snorting, leaving me and North in the middle of the lobby near Tina.

“Hey, Tina.” I say as I approach the security desk, “do you know who it was?”

The security guards know everything that goes on in the buildings they work in. They can’t help it. It’s all there, on the monitors in front of them, from the students who smoke in the stairwells, to the deans who pick their noses in the elevators, to the librarians who have sex in the study carrels…

Interesting, gossipy stuff. Stuff that I usually tell my roommate-slash-landlord, Nines if it’s funny enough.

“Of course.” Tina, as usual, is keeping one eye on the lobby and the other on the many television monitors on his desk, each showing a different part of the dorm (I mean, residence hall), from the entranceway to the Williams’ penthouse apartment, to the laundry room in the basement.

“Ok,” North leans forward, “so who was it?”

Tina stands up to look over her monitors and quietly says “It was a freshman. Elissabeth Sprouse.” My stomach unclenches and I exhale. I was worried it had been one of the student I knew. Obviously it’s still horrifying that one of my residents died but it isn’t as personal as it could’ve been if it were someone like Ada or Ripple.

“How’d she… y’know-?” I ask.

“How do you think, stupid?” Tina asks.

“Shut up smartass.” I snap, “you know damn well that girls don’t elevator surf.”

“This one did apparently.” 

“Why would she do something like that?” Ada wants to know. “Something so stupid? Was she on drugs?”

“How should I know?” Tina seems irritated by our questions but I just know its because she doesn’t know the answer either. Which is not f’cking good. Tina’s worked here for five years now to make sure she and her wife, Valerie, get free tuition. She Always knows what’s happening and that is part of what wasn’t sitting right about this girl’s death. 

“Coroner’ll run a drug and alcohol test, I’m sure.” She say

“And what about the kids who were with her? Did they report that their friend fucking died?” I ask. Tina thankfully takes my angry tone as what it was meant to be.

“Nobody reported her dead or missing. Not until this morning.” Tina responds, shrugging.

“So she could have been lying there all night and no one would’ve known?” I ask, feeling my face get warmer the more pissed I get. 

“Not alive.” Tina says softly, “she landed headfirst.”

“So…then how’d they know who it was?”

“Had her school ID in her pocket,” Tina explains.

“Well, at least she was thinking ahead,” North says.

“North!” I’m shocked, but North just shrugs.

“It’s true. If you are going to play such a stupid game, at least keep ID on you, so they can identify your body later, right?”

Before either Tina or I can reply, John, the dining director, comes popping out of the cafeteria, looking for his wayward cashier.

“North,” he says, when he finally spots her. “Whadduya doing? Cops said they’re gonna let us open up again any minute and I got no one on the register.”

“Oh, I’ll be right there,” North calls to him. Then, as soon as he’s stomped out of earshot, she adds, “Dickhead.” Then, with an apologetic waggle of her nails at Tina and me, North goes back to her seat behind the cash register in the student cafeteria around the corner from the guard’s desk.

“Gavin?”

I look around, and see one of the student workers at the reception desk gesturing to me desperately. The reception desk is the hub of the building, where the residents’ mail is sorted, where visitors can call up to their friends’ rooms, and where all building emergencies are supposed to be reported. One of my first duties after being hired had been to type up a long list of phone numbers that the reception desk employees were to refer to in the event of an emergency of any kind (apparently, Jane had been too busy doing god knows what to do that).

Fire? The number for the fire station was listed.

Rape? The number for the campus’s rape hotline was listed.

Theft? The number for the Sixth Precinct.

People falling off the top of one of the elevators? There’s no number for that.

“Gavin.” The student worker, Bella, sounds as whiny today as she did the first day I met her, when I told her she couldn’t put people on hold while she finished the round of Tetris she was playing on her switch(Jane had never had a problem with this, I was told). “When’re they gonna get rid of that girl’s body? I’m losing it, knowing she’s, like, still DOWN there.”

“Don’t know kid.” I say honestly, nudging her the chocolate bowl.

“We saw her roommate.” Shaolin—the guy with the misfortune to be the resident assistant on duty this weekend, meaning he has to stay in the building at all times, in case he’s needed…like in the event of a student death—drops his voice conspiratorially as he leans across the desk toward me. “She said she didn’t even know Lissy—that’s the dead girl—she said she didn’t even know Lissy knew about surfing. She said she had no idea Lissy hung out with that crowd. She said Lissy was kinda  _ nerdy.” _

“Well,” I say, floundering to say something comforting to my student workers. Shit, I really wish it was Nines here and not me, he always has something comforting to say. “I guess it just goes to show you never really quite know someone as well as you think you do, yeah?”

“Yeah, but going for a joyride on top of an elevator?” Bella shakes her head. “She musta been crazy.”

“Prozac candidate,” Shaolin somberly agrees, exhibiting some of that sensitivity training the housing department has drilled so hard into their RAs’ heads.

“Gavin?” I turn and see that Ada had resurfaced with a thick folder from Sixty’s office.

“Ohmigod,” she says, making no attempt whatsoever to lower her voice so that it isn’t audible to everyone on the entire first floor. “The phones are ringing off the hook back in the office. All these parents are calling to make sure it wasn’t their kid. But Sixty says we can’t confirm the deceased’s identity until the coroner arrives. Even though we know who it is. I mean, Sixty had me get her file and told me to give it to Dr. Manfred.”

Ada waves the thickly packed manila file. Elissa Sprouse had a record in the hall director’s office, which means that she’d either gotten in trouble for something or been ill at some point during the school year…

…which is fucking weird, because Elissa was a freshman, and the fall semester had only just begun.

“Her mom’s a major nutcase.” She announces. “She called Sam no less than thirty times to check on Elissa and demanded that Elissa only be allowed to check girls in. Clearly she wanted her to be a virgin til marriage.”

“Clearly her mom doesn’t know lesbians are a thing.” Bella snorts. I struggle to hide a snort at that.

“Mom also made sure Sixty knew Elissa suffers from multiple disorders and conditions that I know would require all of the residence hall staff to know about. Can you say Munchausen by proxy?”

“That’s the shit that the little gay kid has in it, right?” I ask. “The one that yells about gazebos?”

Ada blinks in surprise.

“What? I read.” I defend myself. “And it’s one of my sister’s favorite movies.”

“Well, yes. Eddie Kaspbrak is a prominent example of munchausen by proxy.” Ada concedes.

Ada’s undergrad degree is in sociology. She thinks that I suffer from low esteem. She told me this the day she met me, at check-in two weeks earlier, when she went to shake my hand, then cried, “Oh my God, you’re that Gavin Reed?”

When I admitted that I was, then told her—when she asked what on earth I was doing working in a college residence hall (unlike me, Ada never messes up and calls it a dorm)—that I was hoping to get a BA one of these days, she said, “You don’t need to go to college. What you need to work on are your abandonment issues and the feelings of inadequacy you must feel for being dropped from your label and robbed by your legal guardian.”

Which is kind of funny, since what I feel I need to work on most are my feelings of annoyance for Ada.

“Ada, is that the deceased’s file?” Simon asks.

“Yeah, did you know her mom’s a total control freak?” She responds, handing over the massive file.

“Ada, no psychoanalyzing the parents.” He scolds her.

“Kinda hard not to.” She points out, “She’s like a textbook case of Helicopter parent.”

As Dr. Manfred flips through it, he suddenly wrinkles his nose, then asks, “What is that smell?”

“Um,” I say. “Mr. Williams sort of—well, he, um…”

“He yakked,” Shaolin says. “In the planter over there.”

Dr. Manfred sighs. “Not again.” His cell phone chimes, and he says, “Excuse me,” and reaches for it.

At the same moment, the reception desk phone rings.

Everyone looks down at it. When no one else reaches for it, I do.

“Cyber Hall,” I say.

The voice on the other end of the phone isn’t one I recognize.

“Is this that dormitory located on Washington Square West?”

“This is the residence Hall, yes.” I say remembering my training.

“I was wondering if I could speak to someone about the tragedy that occurred there earlier today,” says the unfamiliar voice.

Tragedy? I immediately become suspicious.

“Are you a reporter?” I ask. At this point in my life, I can sniff them out a mile away.

“Well, yes, I’m with the Post—”

“Then you’ll have to get in touch with the Press Relations Department. No one here has any comment. Good-bye.” I throw down the receiver.

Shaolin and Bella are staring at me.

“Wow,” Shaolin says. “You’re amazing.”

Ada gives her sweater a quick dust off, since she seemed to have dog hair on it.

“He ought to be,” she says. “Considering what she’s had to deal with. The paparazzi wasn’t exactly kind, were they, Gavin? Especially when you walked in and found Connor Anderson receiving fellatio from…who was it? Oh yes. Daniel Philips.”

“Wow,” I say, gazing at Ada with genuine wonder and a lot of annoyance. “You really put that photographic memory of yours to good use, don’t you, robobaby?”

Ada smiles modestly while Bella’s jaw drops.

“Gavin, you went out with Connor Anderson?” she cries.

“You caught him getting head from Daniel Philips?” Shaolin looks as happy as if someone’s just dropped a hundred-dollar bill in his lap.

“Um,” I say. It’s not like I have much of a choice. They can easily Google it. “Yeah. It was a long time ago.”

Then I excuse myself to go search for a soda, hoping a combined jolt of caffeine and artificial sweeteners might make me feel less like causing there to be yet another death among the building’s student population. This time among my asshole student workers.


End file.
